


The thunder woke you

by Roadie



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Memories, Sex, Thunderstorms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:48:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23571871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roadie/pseuds/Roadie
Summary: She sneaks up on you now like the thunder did, unexpected but not unwelcome, warm against your back.“Everything okay?” she asks. Her lips brush your ear, her voice thick with sleep.You hum and lean into her. “It’s nice to see things be weird in such a boring way.”
Relationships: Alex Danvers/Maggie Sawyer
Comments: 24
Kudos: 182
Collections: Secret Sanvers Lockdown Writing Challenge





	The thunder woke you

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this all in one afternoon. No beta, though I did do a few quick rounds of editing on my own. All mistakes are mine.
> 
> This is my first ever contribution to a fic challenge! #sanverslockdown2020

The thunder woke you.

It crept up on you like an old friend, unexpected but not unwelcome. The rain started in the evening, a gentle patter on the window glass. The sound is unusual in National City. You had both startled with the first drops, caught off guard by the small, sharp noises until you’d realized what they were. You went to the window, then, and looked out. The drops darkened the concrete of the balcony, one spot at a time, until its tan colour turned a solid, dark, muddy grey. Water gathered in corners, flowing toward the drain so little used that its metal grate is barely discoloured despite its age.

You opened the balcony door to let the smell of the rain in.

You closed it again before you went to sleep. But when you lay down, you lay facing out toward the curtain that hung between you and the window. She folded herself behind you, a kiss to the back of your neck and a hand slipped under your shirt, warm against the skin between your navel and your breasts. You slept easily like that, your diaphragm opening into her palm.

When the thunder woke you, she had rolled away from you in her sleep. She lies more comfortably on her right side, you know, so she’s on her own pillow now. It left space for the thunder to catch you, a warmth in the back of your mind, a frisson down your spine. 

The last time you heard thunder was more than a year ago.

You slide out of bed, careful not to disturb her. There’s a blanket over the back of the sofa, a quilt that smells like your aunt’s living room in the apartment near the high school in Blue Springs. You wrap yourself in it now and go to the window, parting the curtains just enough to see outside.

In Nebraska, you could see the rain hours before it reached you. Especially in the autumn after the corn was harvested, or in the spring before it grew in, the darkened sky would crest the distant horizon and creep toward you like a ghost. When the rain carried a storm, you could see the flashes of light that outlined the clouds, the forks of it connecting the ground and the sky. 

Your family lived in an old farmhouse, and when the rain was coming your father would lower the attic ladder and you’d climb up together. The weather came from the west, so you’d look out the westward window to watch it approach. Your father taught you to count the seconds between the thunder and the lightning: one, Mississippi, two, Mississippi, three. The closer they were to each other, the closer the storm to you. You’d make bets on how long it would take to cross the acres of fields and reach you.

But rainfall is rare in National City; thunderstorms are rarer still. In the seven years you’ve lived here, you can count all the storms you’ve seen on one hand. But for all that storms are so unusual here, there’s something about this one that makes the world feel a bit more normal. Rain is one of the only things that can easily empty the National City streets of cars and pedestrians alike. People are afraid to drive in it and they don’t want to walk at it. So now, in the dark with the thunder and the downpour, it doesn’t seem strange for the streets to be empty of everything that doesn’t have a siren or a light bar.

The streets have been empty for weeks, though.

God, this lockdown is weird.

It has impacted you less than most. You still go to work every day, though there are arrows taped to the floor of the bullpen to try to direct the foot traffic and keep people spaced apart. Interrogation rooms have been turned into offices. You’re supposed to start wearing masks on Monday. You’ve been after your boss to get after the Commissioner to reduce the prison load.

Alex goes in to the DEO one or two days a week. On-site staff has been reduced to the skeleton crew required for security and to manage the holding cells. Recruit training is on hold; in-person meetings are cancelled. She spends a lot of time on conference calls with DC and the desert base. 

You came home the other night to find her wearing a DEO-approved black polo shirt for her videoconference, her hair up and back like she wears it at work, entirely dissonant with the sweatpants and thick socks she wore safely hidden under the table.

She sneaks up on you now like the thunder did, unexpected but not unwelcome, warm against your back.

“Everything okay?” she asks. Her lips brush your ear, her voice thick with sleep.

You hum and lean into her. “It’s nice to see things be weird in such a boring way.”

You stand together like that for a moment, looking out into the night, until she shifts, tugging a bit at your blanket. You let her take it and she wraps it around both of you, her front to your back, cocooning you together. 

“Storms like this are one of the only things I miss from Nebraska,” you say. “They made the farmers happy, which made my dad happy.”

“I used to love when we’d have them in Midvale, too,” Alex says. “The rain was so loud on the ocean, I’d sleep with my windows open to hear it drown out the waves.”

“Hmm.” You sink back into her. She wraps her arms tighter around you.

“Kara loved them too,” she says. “The white noise of the rain would mute everything else. She slept better when it rained than any other time.”

You stand quietly for awhile. You see the water gathering on the streets below, along the curbs that aren’t designed for drainage, as you sink into a place of quiet, of belonging. In the heart of the violence beyond the glass -- the storm, and everything the storm conceals -- you feel steady.

The world has been quiet for weeks, now, but it’s the quiet of a thread pulled too tight to vibrate, of a tower just before it falls. 

This is the first time in weeks that it has felt calm.

Outside is grey, and dark, and wet, and you are deep in the witching hour. You can feel Alex breathing, her chest moving behind you, her lips brushing your ear.

Then those lips turn and press themselves to your skin, more firmly this time. They nuzzle your hair, work their way through it, and there’s a gentle, barely-there kiss to that soft hollow behind the crook of your jaw.

It’s a question.

You tip your head to the side, an offering, in answer. Her hand slides up past the hem of the blanket and splays across your throat. That hand is so strong, and it is so gentle, and it moves you the way she wants you to move so she can slide her lips down your neck.

Your spine feels liquid. 

“Take the blanket,” she breathes into your skin, so you do. You hold it closed around you and her hands slide down your sides underneath it, then up again under the hem of your shirt. Those hands are warm and soft, skimming over you like water over rocks. Her mouth is on your shoulder, her breath moving the blanket. You time your breaths to hers: one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three. She smiles against you and her hands grow firmer. They slide lower, they slide higher, until they find the most intimate parts of you. She moves slowly, precisely, over nerves that sit close to the skin. The rain sounds louder, the thunder with it, until you realize that it’s not the thunder you're hearing but your blood rushing in your ears. She is tuning you to her frequency. It’s the hum of your body made audible. 

There’s a streetlight just outside the apartment; it casts a sharp glare over the glass of the windows so they reveal nothing but its reflection in the dark. Her strong hands make your knees weak and you let the blanket fall, your body lurching forward until you catch yourself, palms to the glass. She makes a happy, wordless sound in your ear and follows you forward, both hands stronger on you, inside you. Breath, yours and hers, fogs the pane. Somewhere your voice is making sounds: gasping, maybe, or begging, and hers is making sounds too, of praise or love or both. You can’t hear them, but you can feel them like you feel her, deep inside you.

Somewhere between the lightning and the thunder, your body gives her every part of itself.

You feel her shifting, making herself strong to hold you when you turn weak. But still you fall forward, forehead against the cold glass.

What you feel, after, is the cold and the wet of the glass against your palms and your fingers and your face, and the warm of her hands over your chest and your pelvis. Her forehead rests beside yours, and you’re both breathing hard.   
  
When your skeleton feels solid again, you lift your head and drop it back against the side of hers. 

She stands up fully, pushing off the glass, and when she turns her head to look at you, she starts to laugh, eyes sparkling in the dark.

“Well,” she says. “Hi.”

You grin back. “Hi.”    
  
She tastes like sleep when you kiss her, and no part of you minds.    


Your hand finds hers under your shirt, and you use it to lead her back to the bed. With the covers low on your waist, you lie together like you usually do, with her spooned into your front, and your hand holding hers somewhere near her heart.    
  
In the morning, you’ll see smudged handprints on the glass. They’ll make you smile, and you’ll decide they can stay there until the evening, after work, when you’ll dig the Windex out from under the sink. You’ll look out the window while you drink your coffee, and the streets will be scattered with puddles that confused pigeons will happily bathe in.   
  
You’ll kiss Alex in the living room before you head to the precinct for the day. 

But now, you tuck your hand into Alex’s chest, and you feel its rise and fall. 

You count her breaths until you fall asleep. One, Mississippi. Two, Mississippi. Three.


End file.
